Letterboxd — Your life in film

It’s been obvious since the wrongly cancelled Everything Sucks that Sydney Sweeney is a superstar. In Reality, it becomes apparent that she is truly one of the most formidable, fearless, and bold young actresses in the business too. Razor sharp, inventively set about, and wound tight with excruciating tension - few things in cinema are as instantly arse-clenching as seeing emboldened men assert their authority in a woman’s personal space, and that’s without even  accounting for the Russian electoral interference…

I’ll be writing a review tomorrow (GOOD LUCK ME LOL! HOW DO YOU CONDENSE THIS INTO 500 WORDS?!), but I think it’s safe to say that Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse is better than Into The Spider-Verse. It’s also better than any other Spider-Man film. And any other Marvel film. And probably any other comic book movie. And… well, I don’t think there’s many films, animated or otherwise, that come close to evoking the kind of transcendent feeling of sheer awe…

Kurokami no otome: You mustn't give up. There's always a next step in life!

One of my all-time favourite happy place films. A real honour to introduce a screening of it at Storyhouse Chester this evening. For anybody interested, here’s my transcript of my introduction;

If you’ve never seen a Masaaki Yuasa film before, then you’ve never seen anything like a Masaaki Yuasa film. And if you have seen a Masaaki Yuasa film before, then… well… you can almost definitely…

Nishi: So what! I wanna get out! 'Cos there's so much out there! So many different people, living different lives! Incredibly good guys, bad guys... Folks completely different from us! It's one huge melting pot! See, it's not about success, dying in the streets, who's better, who's not! I just want to be a part of it! I realized that even if I've no connections, no talent, even if I'm one big loser, I want to use my hands and…

Everyone should watch this. An excoriating exposé of an industry, a media, a societal mindset that has enabled and propagated the simultaneous sexualisation of young girls and infantilisation of grown women for so long that we’ve grown inured to its clear and wretched monstrosity. Brooke Shields is an absolute fucking warrior, and she never should’ve had to be - the fact folk were genuinely surprised that the budding young actress who’d only ever been treated as forbidden fruit fodder for…

TW: Holocaust, Concentration Camps, Descriptions of Death/Bodily Harm

There’s a moment in this essential, remarkable, yet utterly soul-destroying half-hour documentary where - after witnessing horror upon horror inflicted by the Nazis in their concentration camps - we see the Allies arriving to liberate the survivors of the Third Reich’s atrocities. But it doesn’t feel like liberation in light of the systematic dehumanising and destruction that had been wrought upon those who remained when the last of the SS were marched…

Barbara Simon: It gets tiring. Trying so hard all the time, doesn't it?

Watching Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was one of those transcendental cinema experiences that I just know I’ll always look back on with huge affection. Not only is Kelly Fremon Craig’s adaptation of the classic Judy Blume novel a delicately crafted, beautifully detailed, spectacularly well acted coming-of-age film in the vein of Stand By Me, Fremon Craig’s own The Edge of Seventeen, and Greta Gerwig’s…

FAST X is a bad film. It’s also a bad blockbuster. It’s not even “Leave your brain at the door” entertainment, because frankly it doesn’t even deign to presume you’re bringing a brain with you in the first place. Jason Momoa is fun, but for a film that promised 1000% Momoa it needed about 2000% more Momoa; instead, we have Vin Diesel trying to give a dramatic performance as a man who talks like a gravelly Honey Monster and emotes…

Beau Wassermann: Mommy, please! Please, help me, please! Please, oh God, please! Help! Help me! Somebody help me, please! Help! Help! Help me, please! Help, please! Please, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna...

Beau is Afraid is so relentlessly tense and anxiety inducing it makes Uncut Gems look like My Neighbour fuckin’ Totoro. I don’t know whether it’s made me glad I recently finished therapy or convinced me I actually need more. All I do…